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Queen Elizabeth to Visit Manhattan on Tuesday

She was a vivacious young queen when she first saw New York City in 1957, regal in white gloves but as dazzled as any tourist taking in the Statue of Liberty and the skyline of Manhattan from the deck of a rumbling Army ferry. She wanted her first sight of the magical city “as it should be approached,” she said — from the harbor.

Cheering throngs lined Broadway for miles, showering Queen Elizabeth II with affection as blizzards of ticker tape engulfed her entourage. She waved from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s bubble-top limousine, a tiny woman suspended in time. She spoke at the United Nations, surveyed the romantic city from atop the Empire State Building and dined that evening at the Waldorf-Astoria in a diamond tiara.

“A visit to New York for just a day is really a teaser,” she said of her 15 whirlwind hours in a town her imagination had conjured from pictures. “Everyone has a mental picture of famous places they have never seen. But I suppose the mental pictures of New York are nearer reality than those of any other city.”

Nearly two decades later, in 1976, the 50-year-old queen made her second visit to New York, marking the Bicentennial of America’s Declaration of Independence from Britain, part of a six-day tour that took her to Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. She was hailed by huge crowds and became a centerpiece of the celebrations. Mayor Abraham D. Beame proclaimed her an honorary New Yorker.

Now, in the twilight of a reign that has spanned 58 years, one of the longest of any British monarch, the 84-year-old queen is to visit New York on Tuesday for a third and perhaps final time, accompanied by her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The royals will arrive in a private plane from Canada, where they have been traveling for nine days, and fly home to Britain in the evening.

Although the queen arrives in the summer’s worst heat wave, she is not the wilting kind. The dark hair has gone white and the shoulders are a bit rounded with age now, but her step is still lively and the face engaged on a reception line or at a garden party as she shakes another hundred hands and speaks with simple dignity. She is addressed initially as “Your Majesty” and thereafter as “Ma’am.”

What can a visitor do with less than a half-day in New York? Quite a lot, it seems, if she is moving through Manhattan’s traffic morass in a motorcade escorted by police officers, watched over by cordons of federal, state and Scotland Yard agents and ushered through formalities by a protocol phalanx from City Hall and the State Department.

Photo

Queen Elizabeth’s last visit to New York took her to Federal Hall on July 9, 1976, flanked by Mayor Abraham D. Beame, left, and Prince Philip.Credit
Associated Press

In contrast to her first two visits to the city — what might be called her awe-struck first impressions and her more mature celebratory return — this is to be a short, relatively solemn occasion: a valedictory at the United Nations, a reflective half-hour at ground zero and a stroll through a garden created in the canyons of Lower Manhattan as a memorial to the 67 Britons killed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

In the first of the three stops on her itinerary, the queen will speak at midafternoon to the delegates of 192 nations of the United Nations General Assembly and a galaxy of dignitaries and political leaders. There were only 82 member states in 1957, when she exhorted delegates to persevere in the quest for peace and human rights.

This time, she will offer personal reflections, looking back across the decades and to the future. “She will be taking a global perspective,” said Harriet Cross, speaking for the United Kingdom’s Mission to the United Nations. “She will touch on progress made since she was last here, and challenges that remain.”

Generalizations, yes. But as a constitutional monarch with largely ceremonial powers, Elizabeth does not voice political views publicly. She opens Parliament, confers with her prime ministers and stands watch on the passing cavalcade. In her lifetime, the queen, who was born April 21, 1926, has seen the British Empire transformed from a pre-eminent world power into a commonwealth of 54 independent states, of which she is the figurehead. She is also the queen of 16 realms, including the United Kingdom, and a nominal leader of two billion subjects, nearly a third of the world’s population.

In the late afternoon, she will go to ground zero. She will make no speech, but will be met by an honor guard and by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Govs. David A. Paterson of New York and Christopher J. Christie of New Jersey. She will briefly tour the 16-acre site, where thousands died and where today new skyscrapers are rising, with reflecting pools in the footprints of the fallen twin towers.

Finally, in the early evening, the queen will cross Lower Manhattan to the British Garden in Hanover Square, a serene greensward memorial to the British subjects who died at the trade center on Sept. 11, 2001. Relatives of some 50 victims will meet the queen, who will cut a ribbon to formally open the garden.

An elongated triangle in the rough shape of the British Isles, it is a landscaped version of a traditional British garden, planted with hydrangea, rhododendron, azalea, foxglove, holly and yew, and set off by a winding path of Morayshire stone and benches fashioned in Northern Ireland. Situated on city land, the garden broke ground in 2005 and has been open for several years.

The queen will make no public remarks, but will stroll the path, escorted by the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Elton Sheinwald; the consul general in New York, Sir Alan Collins; the mayor and the governors; and leaders of the British Memorial Garden Trust, which developed the project with the St. George’s Society of New York as a gift to the city.

Elizabeth, who became queen at 25 after her father, King George VI, died in 1952, has four children and eight grandchildren. Her duties have taken her around the world many times, making her one of history’s most widely traveled heads of state. While she has visited America often, her New York visits are rare touchstones in a life of pageantry and restraint.

Correction: July 9, 2010

An article on Monday about the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to New York City referred imprecisely to a ferry she rode during a visit in 1957. While the ferry transported her between Staten Island and Manhattan, it was an Army ferry, not the Staten Island Ferry. The article also referred incorrectly to her attendance at the Kentucky Derby. She has done so just once, in 2007 — not “frequently.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 5, 2010, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Queen Elizabeth to Visit Manhattan on Tuesday. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe